Man survives being stung by more than 1K bees

September 14, 2010 12:00:00 AM PDT

KYLE, Texas --

A man in Texas is lucky to be alive after being stung more than 1,000 times by a swarm of bees.Lamar Lacaze said he thought he was going to die when he was attacked by the bees two weeks ago while mowing a field.

Lacaze, 65, a barber by profession, managed to get off his tractor and call his son on his cell phone for help.

Lacaze spent a week at the hospital. Emergency room doctors pulled more than 1,200 stingers from his body, including his ears, nose and mouth.

"I had to spit all of them out so I could breathe," Lacaze said. "They got up my nose and down in my ears."

His family said as many as 70,000 bees were living in an old water heater on their property.